Currently, patients suffering from chronic wounds are typically cared for by a wound care nurse who may either assess wounds based on experience or use prohibitively expensive and specialized instruments to facilitate assessment. The wound care nurse may determine the stages of the wound based on a number of factors. Accurate determination of wound staging will impact the decision on which treatment to apply, and subsequently affect the rate of healing.
Since assessment of the wound staging is typically performed by wound care nurses, such assessment is subjected to wide variations based on their experience. Experienced wound care nurses may be able to effectively assess a wound and assign appropriate treatment for speedy recovery, while inexperienced nurses may apply less effective treatment due to inaccurate wound assessment, resulting in slower recovery. Shortage of experienced wound care nurses also means that these experienced wound care nurses are not able to take care of the increasing number of chronic wound patients.